In Patrick O’Brian’s book“Master and Commander” the sixth chapter begins with the ship’s doctor on land
thinking about how men age. After
college, in my early 30s, I decided that the price of taking power was far too
high, so I determined to be a journeyman at writing rather than a leader. Dr. Mathurin’s reflections fit my own
experience and make me glad of my choice.
Mathurin is thinking about what happens to men as they age and become
absorbed by their profession and set on a path by the cumulative effect of
their choices. He sees middle age, around 40, as where the line is crossed and
is talking specifically about a mid-career Lieutenant, James Dillon:
“It appears to me a critical
time for him…a time that will settle him in that particular course he will
never leave again, but will persevere in for the rest of his life. It has often seemed to me that towards this
period [middle age] … men strike out their permanent characters; or have those
characters struck into them. Merriment, roaring high spirits before this: then
some chance concatenation, or some hidden predilection (or rather inherent
bias) working through, and the man is in the road he cannot leave but must go
on, making it deeper and deeper (a groove or channel), until he is lost in his mere
character—persona—no longer human, but an accretion of qualities belonging to
this character.
James Dillon was a
delightful being. Now he is closing in. It is odd—will I say hear-breaking?—how
cheerfulness goes: gaiety of mind, natural free-springing joy. Authority is the
great enemy—the assumption of authority. I know few men over fifty that seem to
me entirely human: virtually none who has long exercised authority. The senior
post-captains here…Shriveled men (shriveled in essence: not, alas, in belly).
Pomp, an unwholesome diet…pleasure…at too high a price, like lying with a
peppered paramour. Yet Lord Nelson, by (Captain) Jack Aubrey’s account, is as
direct and unaffected and amiable a man as could be wished. So, indeed, in most
ways is Jack Aubrey himself; though a certain careless arrogancy of power
appears at times. His cheerfulness at all events is still with him.
How long will it last? What
woman, political cause, disappointment, wound, disease, untoward child, defeat,
what strange surprising accident will take it all away? But I am concerned for
James Dillon: he is as mercurial as he ever was—moreso—only now it is all ten
octaves lower and in a darker key; and sometimes I am afraid in a black humour
he will do himself a mischief. – page 202-3.
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